Limits of moral concepts
September 19th 2008 05:35
Concepts can come unstuck; our words can fail us. Perhaps not all of the usual parts to the concept are applicable, or perhaps some normal assumption fails.
The concept of "death" isn't neatly applicable in cases of cryonics; the concepts of "self" and "identity" aren't neatly applicable to matter-transmitting Star Trek universes (or even to grandfather's hammers and ships of Theseus... at least when these things are discussed in a philosophical context).
Of course, concepts are continually evolving as well; there is a creative dimension to them. It would be silly if we were unable to adapt our language to our circumstances.
Two thoughts inspired by Hannah Arendt (The origins of totalitarianism, 1951).
Thought 1: The moral and legal concepts we have (language, practices) aren't always good enough.
(This shouldn't be surprising. Ancient Greek concepts of physics aren't good enough to handle quantum mechanics. The world resists.)
Arendt, in speaking of totalitarian atrocities, remarks: "We attempt to classify as criminal a thing which, as we all feel, no such category was ever intended to cover. What meaning has the concept of murder when we are confronted with the mass production of corpses?" (emphasis added)
So we try to apply "murder" or "criminal" to genocide, and for some reason we fail -- and we realize we fail. The world resists. Some normal assumption is violated, some part of the concept is inapplicable.
Genocide is qualitatively different from murder, not just quantitatively different. We sense the presence of the new. If you keep adding rocks together, eventually you get a "pile", although there's no clear line between pile and aggregated rocks.
Compare the way that "human trafficking" was created as a new crime. Existing legal categories couldn't always cover it; or even if they did cover it, they were felt, somehow, to be insufficient.
("Feeling" meaning what? -- That our unconsciousness races ahead of our consciousness? -- Where do we get this moral sense on the basis of which we correct, that allows us to perceive inadequacy in our current practices?)
Secondly, Arendt mentions "the creation of conditions under which conscience ceases to be adequate and to do good becomes utterly impossible" (emphasis added). -- Situations where our everyday moral character, tendencies, rules, beliefs are unable to process; they return us an error message and break down.
"When a man is faced with the alternative of betraying and thus murdering his friends or of sending his wife and children... to their death; when even suicide would mean the immediate murder of his own family -- how is he to decide? The alternative is no longer between good and evil, but between murder and murder. Who could solve the moral dilemma of the Greek mother, who was allowed by the Nazis to choose which of her three children should be killed?"
Act utilitarianism has a ready in-principle answer, even for the Greek mother. The moral choice is that which maximizes happiness.
But there's an alternative analysis.
I think Arendt is mainly talking about limitations of our moral equipment, and making psychological claims about how to "kill the moral person" in a person. (If you confront a person with impossible decisions like these, or implicate them in causing evil, you somehow neutralize or confuse their moral apparatus.)
She might or might not be suggesting this further point (thought 2): that, in these cases, one may speak of the limitations of morality itself. That is, when you try to talk about morality here, or to apply the concept, or to use "good", "evil", "right", and "wrong"... some important piece is missing, or some normal assumption is violated.
Elsewhere, I've remarked on the possibility that "moral" is a cluster -- and therefore open to coming unstuck, like other clusters. And Bernard Williams seems to have a similar idea, when he refuses to define the moral, but simply gives examples of what a "moral consideration" is (Ethics and the limits of philosophy, 1985).
On this analysis, there is no right choice, no matter what moral equipment we have, and it is an error of language to speak of right and wrong -- even though there is still impetus to try to speak of these things, to try to apply them.
The concept of "death" isn't neatly applicable in cases of cryonics; the concepts of "self" and "identity" aren't neatly applicable to matter-transmitting Star Trek universes (or even to grandfather's hammers and ships of Theseus... at least when these things are discussed in a philosophical context).
Of course, concepts are continually evolving as well; there is a creative dimension to them. It would be silly if we were unable to adapt our language to our circumstances.
***
Two thoughts inspired by Hannah Arendt (The origins of totalitarianism, 1951).
Thought 1: The moral and legal concepts we have (language, practices) aren't always good enough.
(This shouldn't be surprising. Ancient Greek concepts of physics aren't good enough to handle quantum mechanics. The world resists.)
Arendt, in speaking of totalitarian atrocities, remarks: "We attempt to classify as criminal a thing which, as we all feel, no such category was ever intended to cover. What meaning has the concept of murder when we are confronted with the mass production of corpses?" (emphasis added)
So we try to apply "murder" or "criminal" to genocide, and for some reason we fail -- and we realize we fail. The world resists. Some normal assumption is violated, some part of the concept is inapplicable.
Genocide is qualitatively different from murder, not just quantitatively different. We sense the presence of the new. If you keep adding rocks together, eventually you get a "pile", although there's no clear line between pile and aggregated rocks.
Compare the way that "human trafficking" was created as a new crime. Existing legal categories couldn't always cover it; or even if they did cover it, they were felt, somehow, to be insufficient.
("Feeling" meaning what? -- That our unconsciousness races ahead of our consciousness? -- Where do we get this moral sense on the basis of which we correct, that allows us to perceive inadequacy in our current practices?)
***
Secondly, Arendt mentions "the creation of conditions under which conscience ceases to be adequate and to do good becomes utterly impossible" (emphasis added). -- Situations where our everyday moral character, tendencies, rules, beliefs are unable to process; they return us an error message and break down.
"When a man is faced with the alternative of betraying and thus murdering his friends or of sending his wife and children... to their death; when even suicide would mean the immediate murder of his own family -- how is he to decide? The alternative is no longer between good and evil, but between murder and murder. Who could solve the moral dilemma of the Greek mother, who was allowed by the Nazis to choose which of her three children should be killed?"
Act utilitarianism has a ready in-principle answer, even for the Greek mother. The moral choice is that which maximizes happiness.
But there's an alternative analysis.
I think Arendt is mainly talking about limitations of our moral equipment, and making psychological claims about how to "kill the moral person" in a person. (If you confront a person with impossible decisions like these, or implicate them in causing evil, you somehow neutralize or confuse their moral apparatus.)
She might or might not be suggesting this further point (thought 2): that, in these cases, one may speak of the limitations of morality itself. That is, when you try to talk about morality here, or to apply the concept, or to use "good", "evil", "right", and "wrong"... some important piece is missing, or some normal assumption is violated.
Elsewhere, I've remarked on the possibility that "moral" is a cluster -- and therefore open to coming unstuck, like other clusters. And Bernard Williams seems to have a similar idea, when he refuses to define the moral, but simply gives examples of what a "moral consideration" is (Ethics and the limits of philosophy, 1985).
On this analysis, there is no right choice, no matter what moral equipment we have, and it is an error of language to speak of right and wrong -- even though there is still impetus to try to speak of these things, to try to apply them.
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It seems that most concepts today are based on acknowleging the "common good" and then putting it in box because the particulars of our present day thinking makes the "common good" uncommon. Our thought structures have been fragmented and in the modern world, we spend most of our time picking up the pieces.